When Did Women Start to Outlive Men?

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It's well known that women live longer than men do, but this
wasn't always the case: A new study finds that differences
between men and women's life expectancies began to emerge in the
late 1800s.

For the study, researchers analyzed information from people born
between 1800 and 1935 in 13 developed countries.

They found that over this time period, death rates decreased
among both men and women. But starting in 1880, death rates
decreased much faster among women, leading to differences in
mortality rates between the sexes.

The findings show that, although a greater
life expectancy for women is seen as normal today, it is
actually "a relatively new demographic phenomenon that emerged
among people born in the late 19th century," the researchers
concluded.

For example, among people born before 1840, death rates were
about the same for men and women of a given age. But for people
born between 1880 and 1899, death rates for men ages 50 to 70
were 1.5 times greater than those for women of the same age.

Among people born after 1900, the death rate of 50- to
70-year-old men was double that of women of the same age,
according to the study. [ 8
Tips for Healthy Aging ]

Cardiovascular disease was the main cause of the higher death
rates among men, the researchers said. Heart disease and
stroke accounted for more than 40 percent of the increase in male
mortality rates versus female mortality rates between 1880 and
1919, the researchers noted.

Biologically, men may be more vulnerable to cardiovascular
disease, but this susceptibility was seen only after deaths from
other causes, such as infections, started to decline, the
researchers said.

Body fat (also called adiposity) tends to be distributed
differently over men's bodies compared with women's, and "their
differing patterns of adiposity could make men more vulnerable to
the increasing weight that resulted from changes in diet and
activity," the researchers said in their study, published this
week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.

Future studies could investigate other differences between the
sexes, including genetic dissimilarities, that may play a role in
the increased risk of death from heart disease in men, the
researchers said.